March Madness doesn't stop with Notre Dame loss
By TED FOX
Sports Writer
The Notre Dame men's basketball team's experience in the NCAA tournament this year kind of resembled my recent foray into the stand-up comedy circuit.
The first round went really well, but the second time around, we both hit some snags.
The Irish marked their return to the Big Dance after 11 years of not being asked by getting down all over the Xavier Musketeers.
David Graves was a perfect 7-7 from the floor, Matt Carroll an impressive 9-11. Notre Dame led by 14 at the break and then made like Kathy Lee and Carnival cruised its way to an 83-71 win.
But the hot shooting that played such a huge role in the first round win vanished in Notre Dame's second round loss to Ole Miss. Martin Ingelsby was the only Notre Dame starter to shoot above 36 percent from the floor, going 3-6. The Irish as a team only shot 29 percent from the field but still trailed by just two when they took over on their last offensive set of the game.
However, David Sanders got a hand on Carroll's effort to draw the Irish even, and the Rebels went on to win 59-56, grabbing the school's first ever Sweet 16 birth.
For the Notre Dame players, first and foremost, and then for all their fans, both those who date back to the days of Digger and those who are members of the M.O.B generation, a loss wasn't the way the story should have ended.
Fortunately, it didn't.
For a program that for many years only experienced the madness of mediocrity, back-to-back 20 win seasons, a division title, and a trip first to the NIT final and then the NCAAs have once again made Notre Dame more than a speed bump on the road to the Final Four.
The future is the home of many possibilities for the ND men's basketball program. For the fans, that future starts next season.
For the players, that future starts today.
In the meantime, and luckily for all of us college hoops fans, the madness that is March doesn't stop with a Notre Dame loss.
Like every year, I sat down on the first Thursday of the tournament, first enjoying the wall-to-wall basketball, and second, waiting to see that I had correctly picked the winners of all 63 games.
I'm still enjoying all the games.
That second thing about picking all 63 games? Well, that lasted until the end of game one on day one, when Ohio State lost to Utah State in overtime.
Every year, I think because I've been watching basketball for even longer than before and now I try to write about it, I'm somehow going to pick more games right.
Unfortunately, if picking games was calculus, my derivative would be negative, because the more I watch, the fewer games I get right.
But the best part about being a fan of the NCAA tournament is that being right or wrong doesn't really matter.
Sure, most of us, and 99.2 percent of people picking at espn.com, said the two seed in the West, Iowa State, would blow by the No. 15 seed Hampton, in the first round.
But late Thursday night, when Hampton went on that improbable run to take a one point lead with six seconds left, how many of us were still rooting for the Cyclones' Jamaal Tinsley to hit that layup as the clock ran out?
All of us have our March moments, moments that make this month the most engaging time of year to be a sports fan.
Maybe you sat there with your dad, a Kent State alumnus, and boldly told him the Golden Flashes would find a way to topple Indiana and then jumped around your family room with him when they actually did.
Maybe you picked Wake Forest to make a run in the Midwest, starting with a win over Butler, only to watch that little scoreboard in the upper left-hand corner of the screen read Butler 43, Wake 10 at halftime. Perhaps you then colorfully asked how a seven seed in the Big Dance scores 10 points in 20 minutes of basketball.
And you loved every minute of it.
Now, with a Notre Dame program that has once again discovered what it takes to be a tournament contender, there's no telling where March can go.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Sports Stories for Monday, March 26, 2001
